


Strange Magic

by blue_morning



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Banishing spell, DeanCas Smol Things 2018, Drinking, Fluff, M/M, Magic, Men of Letters Bunker, Sorcerer's Apprentice AU kinda, Spells & Enchantments, Squirrels, drunk spellcasting goes horribly wrong, enchanted squirrels, what could go wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 04:37:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16055696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_morning/pseuds/blue_morning
Summary: Dean and Cas have a squirrel problem. Dean and Jack Daniels make it worse.





	Strange Magic

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Nat (ThePamelaOracle) for a great beta.
> 
> Title from the Electric Light Orchestra song.

Dean’s hunting. He’s crouched behind a large oak, motionless for close to twenty minutes now, waiting for his quarry to get close enough. _Wait, there it is_. He takes careful aim. Through the trees he can see his target and the one square inch of fur that he’s going to put a bullet through. He exhales slowly and starts to squeeze the trigger of the pearl-handled automatic.

“DEAN! What are you doing? Stop!” Cas’s voice bursts into his cone of concentration and Dean jerks the gun to the side, finger sliding off the trigger.

The creature turns and sees them, eyes widening. It scampers up a tree, where it sits on a branch, flicking its tail back and forth and chittering angrily.

“Cas, I had him. Your bird feeder was gonna be safe.”

“I don’t want you to kill the squirrel, Dean. When I asked if you could stop him raiding the feeder, I didn’t mean for you to use lethal methods.” Cas is pissed. He turns his back on Dean’s apologies and goes back to watching the birds.

All Dean was trying to do was make the little wooden house a safe place for the cardinals and chickadees and other nameless puffy little birds to come and eat. The bird feeder is the winter version of Cas’s beehives. In the summer he’ll sit for hours watching the bees leaving to go collect nectar and watching them shoot back into the hive, as neatly as bullets. In the winter, Cas bundles up in a parka, hat, and mitts and sits in the lawn chair that stays outside the back door of the bunker year-round to watch the birds at the feeder. All Dean wants is to make things good for Cas. He can’t scrape up the nerve to tell Cas how he feels, but he can show him. He can give Cas the things he likes, things like his beehives and his bird feeder.

The squirrel had moved in a week or so ago. Grey and chubby, it has a sleek coat and a notched ear, and the beadiest black eyes Dean has seen outside of a demon. The first time Dean got close to the beast, he’d whispered _Christo_ just to be sure demons weren’t taking vermin vessels. The squirrel had looked unimpressed, but not demonic, as it went about its business emptying the feeder of sunflower seeds. 

Dean had fixed a squirrel baffle, a large plastic disc, to the pole the bird feeder was on, to stop it from climbing up from the ground. The squirrel had climbed a nearby tree and launched itself into space in a creditable impression of Superman, landing on the tray of the feeder and stuffing its face triumphantly.

So, Dean had gone to the hardware store in Lebanon and come back with a squirrel-proof bird feeder that he hung from a tree branch. It had spring-loaded, weight-sensitive perches, which allowed the birds access to the seeds, but the extra weight of the squirrel was enough to pull the perch down and close off access to the seed inside the feeder. The squirrel was confused. Dean stood there, enjoying his victory, maybe trash-talking the squirrel just a little bit, when the squirrel grabbed onto the end of a small branch with its hind feet and swinging slightly, lowered itself upside down to eat from the feeder without depressing the perch. 

At that point, Dean had decided that the ninja squirrel needed to go. Permanently. Hence the automatic. And now Cas is mad at him. He was only trying to help. It really isn’t fair. Dean stomps into the kitchen and grabs the bottle of Jack from behind the spice rack. It’s halfway through the afternoon and he has nothing better to do than to go and drink in his room and pout. 

The bottle’s down about halfway (it’s been a pretty good pouting session) when Dean gets a bright idea. If he can’t defeat the squirrel with bird-feeder technology, and he can’t shoot it, maybe the Men of Letters can help him get rid of the freeloader without hurting it. Maybe there’s a spell to magick it away. That should get him back in Cas’s good graces. And he’s off to the library, only stumbling a little bit. 

Sam’s in the den watching TV. He looks up as Dean heads past. “Need help with anything?” he asks.

“Nope, I’m fine,” Dean says.

 _Thank God Sammy digitized the card catalogue_. It takes him a couple of tries to type ‘banishing spell’ into the library computer, but soon he’s pulling an old leather-bound book containing translations of ancient Assyrian clay tablets off the shelf. He pages through it, looking for the spell for banishing vermin from grain storage barns. True, the spell is really meant for mice and rats, but a squirrel is a rodent too, right? There’s no reason it shouldn’t work. He peers at the spell, blinking a little to make it come into focus.

Ten minutes later, he’s heading out past the den, his arms full of ingredients, the book balanced precariously on top. Sam looks up again as he heads by. “You sure you don’t need any help with whatever you’re doing?”

“Sammy,” he says with finality. ‘I got this.”

“Okay, knock yourself out.” Sam’s attention returns to the TV.

The ninja squirrel is up on a branch now, keeping an eye on the feeder. It doesn’t seem to mind the chickadees, but it runs the blue jays off when they land. Cas is still sitting in the lawn chair, a blanket over his lap and a mug of something hot steaming in his mitten-covered hands. Dean ignores him as he sweeps the dusting of snow off the concrete walk and sets his ingredients down. He chalks a circle on the ground and, consulting the book through bleary eyes, starts to draw symbols around its edge. He sets a bronze bowl in the centre and adds some dried herbs and a pinch of animal fur from a small brown drawstring bag.

“What are you doing, Dean?” Cas asks.

“Taking care of the squirrel problem. Non-lethally.” Dean checks the book one more time, chants a few words, and drops a lit match into the bowl. A puff of aggressively green smoke boils up from the bowl and dissipates in the chilly air. “This banishing spell oughta do the trick.”

In the tree, the squirrel stiffens for a moment and then turns and looks at Dean. Slowly, it climbs down from the tree.

“See? It’s working already,” Dean says.

But instead of scampering off into the woods, it makes a beeline for the door of the bunker, the door that that Dean has left open, because his hands were too full of spell paraphernalia to close it. Dean and Cas stare open-mouthed as the squirrel darts into the bunker. 

“Well, I didn’t see _that_ coming,” Dean says, swaying slightly on his feet.

Cas makes a noise of annoyance and follows the squirrel into the bunker, Dean at his heels. A shout from the den alerts them to which way it went. They run into the den to find Sam on his feet, staring at the doorway into the kitchen.

“What’s going on? Was that a squirrel?” Sam looks like he’s itching to jump up on the recliner and gather his skirts.

Cas answers: “Dean cast a spell, you better come outside and see what he did, so we can fix it.” Cas sighs heavily, the weight of the world sitting squarely on his shoulders.

“Dean.” Sam’s voice is resigned. He holds his hand out for the spellbook which Dean is still holding. They go back outside and Sam looks at the spell circle on the walkway and compares it with the illustration in the book.

“Oh no.” 

“What?” Dean sounds a bit belligerent. Sam looks back and forth between the book he’s holding and the symbols Dean chalked on the walkway

“Look,’ Sam says. “Those two sigils, they’re reversed. You drew them opposite to where they’re supposed to be.”

“So?”

“So? Dean, you know it’s important to reproduce them _accurately_ or the effect of the spell is going to be different from what you wanted. See the one at the top, the _homa_?”

“The tree thingy?”

“Yes, it’s the tree of life. It should be facing towards the vermin to be banished. You have it facing the bunker. And the _sign of Tanit_ should face away from the banishing, on the other side of the circle.”

Dean’s looking puzzled.

“The symbol that looks like a stick woman,” Sam says. “She’s the Assyrian moon goddess. And you had her facing the squirrel.”

“And this matters why?”

Sam looks heavenward. “Because, Dean, having those symbols reversed, it changes the outcome of the spell.” He flips a few pages and then stops and reads for a minute. “In the configuration you drew, it’s not a banishing spell, it’s a fertility spell, you know, like ‘be fruitful and multiply.” A sound of something glass breaking in the kitchen drifts out the door to where they are standing. Sam claps the book shut. “THIS IS WHY WE DON’T CAST SPELLS WHILE DRINKING.”

Dean is looking a little ashamed now. “Well, good thing there’s only one squirrel, I don’t see him being fruitful and multiplying all on his own.” The three of them troop back into the bunker and head for the kitchen. What they see from the doorway stops them cold.

The kitchen is _full_ of squirrels. There are squirrels on the counter. There are squirrels rooting around in the open pantry. One drags the bag of bread across the counter from where Cas had left it next to the toaster. And in the middle of the kitchen floor, one squirrel ( _his_ squirrel, thinks Dean, noting the notched ear) is standing stone still. There’s a strange hum in the air and the squirrel starts to vibrate. It shakes back and forth so quickly it soon becomes a blur. The blur separates, starting at the top and moving downwards, and when the motion slows to a stop, there are two squirrels in the middle of the floor, the notched-ear squirrel and a near-perfect twin. The new squirrel runs off towards the pantry, while the original squirrel starts to vibrate again.

Cas turns on Dean, furious. “Did you see _that_ coming Dean? Did you? Did you even have the _slightest_ idea what you were doing when you cast that spell? I can smell the whiskey on you. What on Earth gave you the idea that you were in any shape to use magic?”

“I was just trying to _help_! I was stopping the squirrel from chasing off your birds.” 

Sam steps in, peacemaker as always. “It’s okay, we can fix this. We can just recast the spell with the sigils the right way. That should banish all the squirrels.”

Another newly formed squirrel bounds away from Notch Ear and runs out of the kitchen towards the den. Dean is uncomfortably reminded of Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. “Yeah, about that,” he rubs the back of his neck and refuses to meet anyone’s eyes. “I used the last of the rat fur in the storage room for the spell.” 

Cas is looking a bit smitey. Two squirrels fighting over a bagel topple into the kitchen sink. Another one figures out how to open the fridge from where it’s standing on the counter. A beer tumbles out and smashes on the floor. Notch Ear starts to vibrate again.

Sam’s forehead furrows into a reasonable facsimile of the Grand Canyon. “Okay. How about this: we get fur from the original squirrel, the one with the notch in its ear, and use that to recast the spell. That should work. It’s the same principle as voodoo.”

“Excellent idea, Sam,” Dean says, and lunges for the notch-eared squirrel, who’s just finished replicating, but Dean’s reflexes are blunted by whiskey and the squirrel’s too fast. It darts out of the kitchen, heading past the den and down the corridor towards the library. 

Dean and Sam take off in hot pursuit. Cas grabs the large metal colander from the dish rack beside the sink, dislodging a squirrel that was napping in a cereal bowl. He sprints down the hall after them.

They corner the squirrel in the library, but before they can catch it, it swarms up a display case filled with cursed objects, locked away safely in warded boxes. The samurai sword in its sheath falls from its peg on the wall, hitting a small carved onyx bottle on top of the case on the way down. The bottle spins in the air and lands at Sam’s feet, the top popping off and a red liquid spattering Sam’s feet.

“Crap, what was that?” Sam says, shaking the fluid off his pants.

“Um, that was a hair-growing potion,” Dean says, wincing. “I was looking at it last week, it’s supposed to grow a head of long, shiny hair. Like really long.”

Sam barely has time to look shocked before his face is hidden behind a long fall of chestnut hair. He sweeps it back out of his face and it tumbles down his back, pooling on the floor before stopping. He looks like gigantor Rapunzel in flannel and jeans. “Dean…”

“I’m sorry Sam,” Dean says, “here, let me help…” and promptly trips over Sam’s hair. The squirrel, sensing that the attention is no longer on it, leaps from the display case and breaks for the library door. It almost gets away, but Cas manages to slam the colander down, trapping the squirrel underneath it.

“Dean, get me some tweezers, I can pull some hair from its tail.”

Five minutes later the squirrel is still trapped under the colander, a large encyclopedia of runes holding it in place, and Team Free Will are outside, with Sam drawing new sigils in chalk on the walkway. Dean is helpfully holding his hair out of the way. “I think that with the sigils reversed, we’ll be able to reverse the spell.”

“If we banish all these squirrels into the woods, are we gonna upset the balance of nature?” Dean asks.

“I don’t think so,” Sam says, adding herbs and the squirrel’s tail hairs to the bowl. “I’m not sure that the other squirrels are even real, they may be more like magical constructs, seeing as how they only came from one squirrel and not a real mating between two squirrels.”

Dean snickers at that, and says something under his breath about squirrel sex that has Cas glaring at him. 

“You’re not helping,” Cas says.

“Okay, okay, I’m _sorry._ ”

Sam checks to make sure that none of his hair is in the way, and then drops a match into the bowl. The ingredients flare up, releasing a greasy cloud of green smoke. They all turn and watch as a small river of squirrels flows out of the bunker door. As soon as the weak winter sunlight hits them, they wink out of existence, leaving only depressions in the snow to show where they’d been.

“Come on, we better go release the real squirrel,” Sam says. Back in the library, he takes the heavy book off the colander, and the squirrel, feeling the pull of the spell, runs out of the library, heading for the bunker door. They follow him and watch as he bounds into the woods.

Sam gathers up his hair again and drapes it over his arm. “Cas, can you give me a hand cutting this off?”

“I can do it,” says Dean.

“No _thanks_ , Dean. Drunk spellcasting is one thing, but you’re not coming anywhere near me with scissors right now.”

Dean trails disconsolately back to his room. He’s miserable — lying on his bed listening to Clapton when there’s a knock at his door. He looks up to see Cas in the doorway.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Hey, Cas.”

“Can I come in?” Cas asks.

“Yeah, sure.” Dean pulls out his earbuds and scoots up to a sitting position, making room for Cas to sit on the bed next to him.

Cas sits on the bed, but doesn’t look at Dean. “I’m sorry I yelled,” he says to the closet door. “I’m sorry I got so mad. It wasn’t about the squirrel, though it is annoying. I was worried because you had done something dangerous.” Cas looks at at the evidence of the pouting session on Dean’s bedside table. “Magic is not something to be used lightly. Especially after half a bottle of whiskey. I was scared for you. What if you’d accidentally banished yourself to another dimension? Or the bottom of the sea, or Saturn, or...Cleveland?”

Dean can’t tell if that last one is a joke, but he sees the hint of a smile at the corners of Cas’s mouth. The tight, _I fucked up_ feeling in his chest loosens.

“Cas, I’m sorry too. I was so wound up with getting that goddamned squirrel away from your feeder. I kinda lost perspective.”

“But why, Dean?“

There’s still enough booze in his system to make him answer honestly. “Because it was pissing you off. I want watching the birds to be something that makes you happy. Being stuck here in the bunker with us can’t be a picnic. Not when you’re used to heaven...used to having wings and going wherever you want, whenever you want.”

“Do you think I’m unhappy here?” Cas’s tone is incredulous.

“Why wouldn’t you be, Cas?”

Cas tries again, for clarification. “You think that I don’t want to be here.” It’s not phrased as a question.

Dean shrugs, not committing anything out loud.

“Of all the stupid, foolish, _obtuse_ humans it’s ever been my misfortune to —”

Dean cuts him off with a snarky, “Wow Cas. Tell me how you _really_ feel.”

That does it. Cas snaps and surges forward, grabbing Dean by the shoulders and pulling him roughly towards him. Dean is caught off guard and doesn’t fight it. Cas pauses a moment, his face a picture of frustration, and then his lips are on Dean’s. Dean freezes for a split second. This not what he expected, but it is what his wildest dreams are made of. And then he relaxes, relishing the feeling of Cas’s mouth on his. Cas is kissing him hungrily, desperately. Dean can only hang on and enjoy the ride. Finally Cas pulls away, breathing heavily.

“Oh,” says Dean when he can finally speak again.

“Apparently I can’t tell you how I feel, but I can show you.” Cas says, a wry smile on his face.

“You sure did, Cas.” Dean’s smiling now too.

“Can I borrow your laptop, Cas’s eyes are back on Dean’s mouth, “later?” He climbs onto the bed and stretches out next to Dean

“Sure, Cas, what do you need it for?” Dean can feel the heat of Cas’s body pressed up against him; Cas’s hand sliding up under his tee shirt.

“I’m feeling bad for the squirrel. He only wanted to eat. And he was the catalyst for this.” Cas kisses Dean again. A light touch of lips. “I want to do a little research on squirrel feeders.”

Dean pulls him back down into a deeper kiss. “If Amazon has squirrel feeders, I’ll buy him one myself.”


End file.
